I was pretty busy this evening getting some behind-the-scenes stuff done on the website. This is why the Google+ box is suddenly appearing over there on the right hand side, among other things you probably won’t notice. Still, no excuses; I did some writing too, if not as much as I’d like.

He spent the rest of that day studying his uncle’s notes with Tremaine. He was astounded by what he read of electrite’s ability to entangle in the most remarkable manner with the most curious things. “I’ll show you something, nephew, something that so far I’m afraid the world won’t see much of for some time. It’s a communications box I invented.”

He pointed a shaky finger at a large box occupying a fair portion of a table’s surface. A curious upright device was attached to it by a cable. “You talk into it here,” he indicated the upright device. “Your voice goes down this wire into the box. Once in the box, I found a way to use the curious entanglement of the electrite to send your voice to another box. It doesn’t seem to have any practical distance limitations—it always sounds like you’re standing next to the person. It is my proudest achievement, m’boy.”

“That’s remarkable! But if you have such a thing, why would the world not see more of it?”

“It’s in the Conclave’s hands, Altman. They possess the only other such box in the world, unless they’ve finally managed to reproduce it themselves. You know how eager they are to share their knowledge.”

“But this isn’t their knowledge, it’s yours. Can’t you share it?”

The old man smiled. “Not in this particular case, I’m afraid. I owe partial credit to Dr. Pottle of their energies research department. Because we share credit for the invention, my hands are tied.”